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Thursday, 6 November 2014

Guy Fawkes Night

Remember, remember the fifth of November...

Click on image to view a bit larger

The above photograph was created on the evening of November 5th, between 7-8pm, up a hill in Rodborough overlooking part of the Stroud Valley in Gloucestershire, England. Middle right of the image is Stroud town centre.

This image shows an hour's worth of fireworks going off at random from private homes across the valley, and an hours worth of star trails in the sky above. There are also car, airplane, train, lantern and torch light trails throughout the photo as well.

This image took me all evening to create and I had a lot of fun doing so. It is comprised of 103 photographs of 30 second exposures each covering a one hour time span of activity.

Here are a few close-ups from the image above showing more detail of the fireworks. As you can see it was a bit foggy. It was also a bit smoky from the fireworks and bonfires.

And here is a time-lapse movie using the 103 photographs used to create the image at the top of this blog post. (Best viewed on YouTube)

NOTE: I didn't notice I'd dropped the 'e' in 'time-lapse' in the video until after it was created. D'oh! That's what I get for working till 3am on it. :-D

A very brief history...

Tonight was November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night here in Great Britain. It's also called Bonfire Night and Firework Night. On this night every year we remember the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. This was the night of a failed conspiracy by a group of English Catholics who set out to assassinate Protestant King James of England.

Guy Fawkes was the unlucky guy caught guarding the stash of gunpowder barrels hidden under the House of Lords at Parliament in London. The King was expected to be there and they had planned on blowing him up...apparently. Anyway, their plans were foiled and Guy Fawkes and several others were caught and brought before the King, tortured and sentenced to death. Hanged, drawn and quartered.

This day eventually became celebrated as the anniversary of this foiled plot and became a state holiday, sorta like the American Independence Day in the States. It was originally called Gunpowder Treason Day, and was a bit more of an important holiday than it is today.

Today it is celebrated with bonfires, burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes and fireworks.

Update 2:

Who ever wrote this article did their homework! I didn't give them all of this information. And they found a photo of me! I think it's a photo of me that was in the paper with some other ladies at the Stroud Business Awards a couple of years ago.

Update 3:

The image in the paper above had several mentions and was talked about on BBC Radio Gloucestershire's morning show with Claire Carter (8 November 2014, 6-9am). Click here for link to show. (Note: Will only be online a limited time) First mentioned and talked about at 48:06. A mention at 01:32:30. And another mention at 02:19:02.